The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune Without Anyone Knowing

Conor O'Clery

In 1988 Forbes Magazine hailed Chuck Feeney as the twenty-third richest American alive. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey to a blue-collar Irish-American family during the Depression, a veteran of the Korean War, he had made a fortune as co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world's largest duty-free retail chain. But secretly, Feeney had already transferred all his wealth to his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies. Only in 1997, when he sold his duty free interests, was he "outed" as one of the greatest and most mysterious American philanthropists in modern times. A frugal man who travels economy class and does not own a house or a car, Feeney then went "underground" again, until he decided in 2005 to cooperate in a biography to promote giving-while-living. Now in his mid-seventies, he is determined his foundation should spend the remaining $4 billion in his lifetime. The Billionaire Who Wasn't is a tale of one of the greatest untold retail triumphs of the twentieth century, and of what happens to a unique man and his family when confronted with wealth beyond imagining.

Mahlstedt’s persistence in Yokosuka paid off, and in the following three weeks he took deposits for twenty cars. He punched out the orders sitting cross-legged on a futon in his Japanese inn and sent them to Feeney and Miller in Villefranche. He got cards made up that said he represented “Tourist Duty Free Sales Establishment, Vaduz, Lichtenstein.” It was such a mouthful, he said, “No one had any idea what I was saying.” Mahlstedt believed that the real action in the Far East was not in Japan

celebrating his fiftieth birthday in a restaurant, his daughters begged him to take the dimes off the wall, but he wouldn’t. The adult guests saw the funny side. One said, “I’m going to do this for my kid!” Shortly after arriving in Bermuda, Chuck and Danielle created their first, named, charitable venture. They called it the Davney Fund. The word Davney was an amalgam of his mother’s maiden name, Davis, and his father’s name, Feeney. It was not registered as a foundation, as it was just a way

$700 million over the following decade. “In short,” said Pilaro, “the plan turned DFS U.S. operations into a tax-free cash flow machine.” The “Big Bang” restructuring put more distance among the four founders. They were still regarded by everyone as the owners of DFS, but they were now, in legal terms, “shareholder representatives” of the tax shelters and charitable foundations they created. This dissonance may have contributed to missteps in the all-important bidding process. The four had

gave him some control of a major issue among the “big boys.” On the basis of advice from his lawyers that they had a legal right to oust Feeney’s representatives from the DFS board, Parker had organized the extraordinary meeting at the Allen & Overy office in London. “Finally they kicked us off the board,” said Hannon. “They thought that would pressure Chuck. It certainly pressured George and me. But Chuck said he didn’t believe we were doing anything important on the board anyway. That was

no duty—this was eaten up by concession fees—but because of the vast difference between home market prices in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and elsewhere, versus DFS prices. This was due to the inefficiency of the distribution structures in those countries. “Unfortunately for us this unique advantage which we conveniently tucked under the banner of duty free is fast collapsing.” It had collapsed in liquor in 1987, was now collapsing in cosmetics and perfume, and there would be global prices in a